With suspended Labour MP Simon Danczuk now reported to police over expense claims, perhaps he has reflected — when not attending to his unfolding mid-life crisis — on the irony of sending fancy dress campaigners to target a former Lib Dem opponent who claimed for a 40p banana.

The Lib Dems have certainly come a long way since their by-election heyday of the late nineties and early noughties, apparently struggling to work out where the poll is to take place — let alone winning it.

Pensions expert turned Tory peer and minister Ros Altmann was the subject of much amusement last week, with the news of her expulsion as a member of both Labour and Lib Dems, which Altmann had joined — she claims — in order to “keep in touch with what each party was doing”.